


Yellow Ending

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: AU, ME3, Unspecified Gender Shepard, indoctrination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 05:25:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11867664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: Damn you, Garrus, you beautiful, ridiculous creature.Damn you, for being loyal to a fault and noble down to the bone, always a better turian than you admitted, and throwing yourself in front of the death that was meant for me.





	Yellow Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on Tumblr](https://emrisemrisemris.tumblr.com/post/164068323113/emrisemrisemris-snizabelle-imagine-shepard) in response to this post from snizabelle: "imagine Shepard being forced to kill an indoctrinated Garrus".

I don't even know which battlefield it was, now. They blur together. I've lost too much blood.

I remember the husks swarming toward us, the harvester diving out of the sun, the explosion. 

I remember that he shoved me off the cliff to put me clear. I can still see his silhouette against the sky, turning, as the blast catches him full on; enough blue light to drown in.

I remember dragging him to medbay, again. I remember Chakwas pulling fragment after black fragment out, piling them up in a sharps bucket that we incinerated in the drive exhaust.

*

I'm sitting by his bed when he wakes up. 

"What was that about getting all new scars?"

He turns his head enough to look me in the eye. "I aim to please."

Damn you, Garrus, you beautiful, ridiculous creature. 

Damn you, for being loyal to a fault and noble down to the bone, always a better turian than you admitted, and throwing yourself in front of the death that was meant for me.

*

We fuck the night before heading to Earth, or rather we try. It won't work. I'm exhausted and can barely stay awake. He's still hurt. 

I hold him. I barely sleep. He sleeps like the dead.

*

Harbinger lands, light as a feather, taller than the clouds. I'd know that row of yellow lights anywhere; I've spent quite a lot of time daydreaming about punching them out, one at a time. A torpedo would do it. Or maybe ramming.

It turns its head. 

It's the clatter I hear first. I swing round to find Garrus doubled over, leaning all his weight on his rifle, other arm clutching his stomach. Yellow sparks like a jaundiced biotic glow play off the edges of his armour, clotting and clustering around the joints and punctures.

"No!"

I don't know if it's my voice or his.

He tries to straighten - no, is being straightened, spine unfolding despite everything he does. The yellow light thickens, brightens, and tendrils of smoke curl out of the cracks in the armour to be lost in the driving rain.

I want to run to him, throw myself on him, as if I could smother the transformation with my body. I don't. I know I'll burn.

Too late, months ago too late, and I never saw and he never knew, and it feels like the thoughts are sleeting through my head like snow that won't settle. He's dying in front of me, eaten alive by Harbinger's vile infection, and the knowledge refuses to mean anything.

I should be screaming, sobbing,  _ something.  _ I don't. 

I hear the crack of bone on metal as his protesting skeleton finally gives way to the overriding force. For an instant, as golden radiance floods along every limb and his head tips ecstatically backward on his shattered spine, I see an angel in the rain.

I level the pistol.

The first shot shatters the scorched visor. The second through sixth dismantle the skull. The rest falls almost instantly to ash.

I drop the gun; I drop myself, as if the weight of my own body is suddenly too much to carry. 

It's at this moment that I stop caring whether I live or die, because he's dead, and it's only sticking now, that this is it: that we never got to say goodbye, that there is no happy ending, that the world can fall apart between one breath and the next.

*

I see you there, Harbinger, with your yellow eyes, swimming lazily past the glass as if this is all going exactly to plan.

Can you see me? 

Can you see the gun? It's the same one.

Forward, then.

I am going to burn down everything you have and everything you built and everything you are, and I am going to  _ smile,  _ because you took him away from me, you, you, all of you -

  
  



End file.
